Day Fifteen

I did a variety of things at the Art of Cake on my last day. I started by inserting the last week few students of the cake camp into Tammy's contact list on her gmail account. While I was doing that Tammy ran to the store to buy some eggs. She agreed not to do a lot of cakes at this time of the year because it would be crazy, so she is only making three - one for me, one for her daughter, and one for her best friend's daughter - all for graduations. The Boston creme cake, strawberry shortcake, and cannoli cake all require a vanilla cake base. I was responsible for making a large quantity of the vanilla cake base, and the amount of batter I used filled up three half-sheets, for one two-layer cake and two three-layer cakes. I measured all the ingredients using the scale and then I got to use the giant mixer for the first time. Scraping the huge bowl with the spatula was pretty difficult, but overall I had fun. 

After the cake batter was done, I scooped 1000 grams of it onto each half-sheet and Tammy spread it across the pan. At the same time I was finally able to meet Brenda, another lady who works at the bakery. She has been busy fixing her house to put it on the market before she leaves to move to Florida. 

Lastly, I sat at the front desk for a while and made calls to all the students who filled out a registration form with a phone number and no email. I needed everyone's email because it's easier to contact them that way rather than make a bunch of calls. When I finished, my brother came to pick me up and together we chose the logos to decorate our graduation cake with, since he also graduated this year. 

Day Fourteen

I spent all of today sitting at Tammy's laptop on her email account. I went through the camp binder and one by one inserted each name, phone number, email, and address into her gmail account as a new contact. It was a very tedious process and I found it difficult to the handwriting on each registration form. I separated all the contacts by week and then by morning or afternoon session. Most of the kids are from bergen county, but she even had one client for her baking class from New York! I input almost a hundred contacts.

Tammy wanted to give something to me in return for volunteering the past few weeks, so she decided that together, we would bake a half sheet cake for my graduation party this Saturday. She gave us the top four filling and cake combinations to choose from, and in the end my brother and I chose a boston creme cake. I am so excited to help Tammy bake and decorate my very own cake!

Day Thirteen

I was pretty excited when I walked in the bakery today, to hear that we would we baking cake pops. There were many tiers of chocolate and carrot cake in the freezer, so Tammy took them out and we began taking them apart. For a while, Tammy and I stood there breaking all the slices of cake and then crumbling them into very fine grains. I crumbled all the chocolate cake and then Tammy rolled them into bite sized balls. She placed them on a baking sheet.

I finished crumbling the carrot cake that Tammy started, and when it was time to roll them into balls we discovered that the cake wasn't sticking together. To help form the balls of carrot cake, Tammy added some cream cheese frosting into the bowl of cake crumbs. I was able to use all the crumbs and roll a bunch of cake pop balls - it was extremely greasy. As we were rolling the cake crumbs, we both agreed that the cake pops look pretty unappetizing, but nobody realizes it after they are covered in chocolate. 

After we used up all the cake crumbs, we put the sheets into the freezer for them to harden. On another day, they will be dipped and decorated!

Day Twelve

Another one of Tammy's friends asked for her help on a fundraiser Family Promise is hosting in Hackensack. The charity houses homeless people, and Tammy is just to provide a few desserts for that night's event. From the previous day's baking, we still had some leftover mini red velvet cupcakes, so we packaged those. Basically, we used a lot of leftovers and previously baked things were taken out of the freezer.

Tammy had frozen balls of gluten-free almond butter cookies in the freezer. She rolled them in powdered sugar, laid some out on a pan and baked them, but they weren't very presentable. The cookies were very crumbly and messy, but tasted pretty good anyway. Tammy debated a while about providing them for Family Promise, but figured they would appreciate anything she gave them. To make them taste a little better and to add color, we filled them with apricot and raspberry jam by piping a dot on the cookies before baking them in the oven. In addition to the mini cupcakes and powdered cookies, Tammy found some packaged macarons she didn't want anymore. We wrapped all these desserts and brought them in the front for Tammy's friend at Family Promise to pick up later today!

Day Eleven

I got right to work once I entered the bakery - Tammy had me do some math and divide the recipe into a smaller amount, then convert everything into ounces. Once I calculated all the new numbers, I measured everything and used to mixer to basically make the red velvet batter all by myself. The batter was very messy and went everywhere as well as stained my hands. When I finished mixing the batter according to the directions, I lined about ten sheets of cupcake pans. Six of them were mini, and four of them were regular size. I used a small scoop to fill the mini cupcakes, and measured 38 grams of batter into the regular sized cupcakes.

While they were baking in the oven, Tammy explained to me that we were preparing to help one of her friends with an event since he owns a catering business and needs desserts, mainly cupcakes. To add to the amount, we took more chocolate and carrot cake cupcakes from the freezer and arranged them on the large tray. Tammy went out back and got a large bowl of cream cheese frosting, which we piped on the carrot cake cupcakes, and eventually also on the freshly baked red velvet cupcakes. We used pink buttercream for the chocolate ones.

After we wrapped the trays and prepared them to be given to her friend, I finally got the chance to meet Paige, Tammy's daughter who is also attending Middlebury College next year!

Day Ten

For some reason, the last few recipes I typed up when I worked on the camp book last week didn't save onto the laptop. I had to type up some recipes for a second time. When it was time to print, we realized that there was no more computer paper in the printer. Luckily, Tammy had a huge stack of stationary paper which I printed the recipes on after centering it on the page. 

As I was printing, Tammy was still returning all her calls from the weekend. When she was done the two of us baked some more vanilla cake for the summer camp, since there can never be enough; the more cakes Tammy has in the freezer for the camp, the less hectic those few weeks are. Similar to what I had done on another day, I evenly poured batter into the pans after spraying them with the non-stick spray. I also wrapped them after they cooled, and put them in the freezer which is packed with baked cakes. Soon, we are going to have to start storing cakes in the big walk-in freezer out back. I ended the day by folding a few more boxes. 

Day Nine

On Thursday, I spent a few hours at the bakery. As Tammy was listening to all the messages that were left on her voicemail after being away for a few days, I used a small core tool to take out the insides of seventy-two cupcakes. Later that day, a girl scout troop came in to celebrate the end of the year by decorating some cupcakes. Tammy made some buttercream and whipped it up in the mixer, then placed it in a piping bag. I piped the buttercream into the insides of the cupcakes to fill them, and Tammy swirled white buttercream on top. 

Afterwards, Tammy and I rolled out fondant in six different colors. I cut them, rolled them into balls, and put one of each color into a separate bag, so each of the twelve girls would have every color of fondant to decorate their cupcakes with. Then I folded a few boxes. As I finished, Mary arrived and took my place, so I was able to come home and start getting ready for prom. 

Day Eight

Tammy opened up The Art of Cake almost three years ago, and has been working very hard ever since. It was originally a walk-in bakery, but when she realized she was making most of her profit from her big event cakes and the summer camp, she realized it wasn't worth keeping it a walk-in bakery. The past years she has taken so many orders and even been at the bakery up until two in the morning working on cakes and even planning for the hectic camp! She finally decided now is her time to take some time off. She has been in Florida with her siblings and to celebrate her birthday since Sunday and will be there until Wednesday. Since she is the owner, the bakery was closed today.

Day Seven

Before setting up the printer and laptop again, Tammy and I patiently awaited a delivery. The back of the bakery, where the kids' camp is held, has four tables, two made of steel and two smaller ones made of wood. To make more room for the twelve campers that come each session and to make the back look a little more presentable, Tammy ordered two new steel tables to match the two that are already set up. Once the man arrived, together we helped bring out the two tables and he set up the new steel ones. After a little more cleaning up, the man left and I got back on the computer.

I typed up a few more recipes, including apple pie, two types of pie dough, butter cream frosting, etc. Tammy found a recipe for chocolate mousse she definitely had to include, however the measurements for ingredients were in ounces and grams, and not many people have a scale at home for the kitchen. So as I was busy typing and printing, Tammy was making a small batch of chocolate mousse to test out the measurements. As accurate as possible, she converted the measurements in ounces and grams to cups, making it much easier for people to make the chocolate mousse at home.

I printed as many copies of all the recipes as I could until the printer ran out of ink. Before I left I was able to meet another client eager to take one of Tammy's cake baking classes. She's very busy at this time of the year, considering her daughter is a senior and has a lot of events coming up, in addition to the kids' camp coming up in a few short weeks. But the man was so nice and clearly interested in learning, so she couldn't say no. As he filled out a few forms and spoke to Tammy some more, I was able to leave.

Day Six

We took a day off from actually baking today. Tammy got a brand new printer so we set that up and connected it to the laptop. For weeks, Tammy has been putting off what I had to do today simply because she doesn't enjoy working with computers. 

For the kids' summer camp, each camper takes home a recipe booklet at the end of the week. Some documents were started with a few recipes, but I basically spent all day typing up recipes. A few recipes were unfinished, others were added to the document. Tammy has a huge, messy binder full of recipes and she knows exactly which ones are good for kids, which ones she wants to keep as a secret, and which ones should just be thrown out. After I typed up a few recipes and organized the document, I began printing 24 copies of a few recipes to start the booklet to be handed out after week one of the camp. It took a few tries to figure out how to print front and back, but once I did, everything went smoothly. 

Day Five

More cake baking for the camps was done today, similar to last Thursday. Mary came in again and together we made two more giant quantities of vanilla cake for the kids' camp this summer. Mary used most of the first batch to fill the pans, and I scooped the last two. Mary also taught me how to get rid of bubbles in the cake; getting rid of the air pockets creates a cake that is much more moist. She started on the second batch while I finished the batter and cleaned some dishes. When she finished the batter, Tammy took a look at the cake and noticed something was missing, maybe water. Mary was positive she put both the water and oil in the batter, but when I scooped the second batch I agreed it was much thicker than the first. Fortunately, the recipe is hard to mess up and the second batch tasted just as good as the first! We cooled and cut off the tops of the cakes to level it out. Then wrapped the freshly baked cakes and placed them in the freezer for future use. 

Day Four

The bakery was closed today due to my supervisor's personal reasons. I'm excited to come back on Wednesday and start working again!

Day Three

I walked into the bakery this morning to find another baker, Mary. She is a college student who has been working with Tammy at The Art of Cake for almost two years and was a ton of fun to work with. I started by spraying pans with non-stick cooking oil, making sure to spray the bottom and the lining around the bottom of the pan, but not the sides. Then I filled the pans with the cake batter, using the scale again so they all had the same amount. These cakes were all for the kids' camp in the summer, so after they were baked and leveled off on top, they were cooled and put into the freezer. Some of the cakes that were already frozen were taken out for me to individually wrap each of them in plastic wrap, and then put back in the freezer. 

After, I worked with Tammy again in final preparation for tonight's pasta dinner for her daughter and the River Dell track team. I helped her cut strawberries and a watermelon, which we placed in a big bowl with blueberries to create a fruit salad. We also arranged the gluten-free oatmeal chocolate chip cookies we made the other day onto platters. And lastly, Tammy melted a chocolate ganache and I took sixty cupcakes and dipped each of them in the ganache, to create a small coating on top of the cupcakes. Hopefully, the desserts we made for tonight's dinner aren't too sweet and will still allow the team to run their best at this weekend's state sectional meets!

Day Two

Today was a short day at the bakery because an electrician came in to install a new outlet and it wasn't safe to bake while he was working. Tammy needed an outlet installed higher on the wall so it wouldn't be hanging around tangled on the floor. She has a camp during the summer for a few weeks. Each week has about twelve kids, and it's dangerous for them to be working near the hanging cords. When the electrician left, we waited for a bride to come in for some cake tasting, which included a piece of the carrot cake we baked yesterday! We set up the different slices and the bride was able to choose between the many different types and combinations of cake. 

Day One

Today was the first day for my internship at The Art of Cake!

When I first arrived at the bakery, Tammy, my supervisor, owner, and baker of The Art of Cake, and I were talking a little bit to get to know each other. It turns out, her daughter is a senior at River Dell High School and is also going to Middlebury College! It was so coincidental to find out that her daughter is going to the same school as me, because whenever I tell people I'm going to Middlebury they always ask where that is since they have never heard of it. Eventually I'll meet her and I'm so happy I'll know someone once I arrive at school next year.

Tammy was asked to bake dessert for the River Dell track team's pasta dinner this Thursday. We tried to stay more on the healthier side, so we made large quantities of carrot cake and gluten-free oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. I got to try both and they were delicious. I helped measure out all the ingredients before pouring it into a giant mixer. When the carrot cake batter was done, I used a scale and poured exactly 6.2 ounces of batter into small cake trays, and then filled about a hundred cupcake liners with exactly 44 grams of batter. With the raw cookie dough batter, I scooped small spoonfuls of cookie dough onto four trays to be put in the oven, and then scooped small spoonfuls very close together on another tray, to be put into the freezer for whenever Tammy might need them again.